Kaliope's WoW Crafting Blog

Investigative Reporter for World of Warcraft Tradeskills

Let's talk about what we don't like with our professions =) I'm sure every one of you has at least one thing that bugs you about one of your trade skills. I want to hear about the things you don't like. So I'm putting a call out to you guys. Add a Comment below and tell me everything you dislike about professions. Feel free to list as many as you want. Sometimes it's easier to identify a problem than to come up with a solution, so I thought we'd start with that for now.I'll go first!

1) I hate that the only way to collect chaos orbs is by running dungeons. I primarily run dungeons on my geared characters so I can minimize the grief I expose myself to from other players. Meanwhile my hunter has yet to craft even one epic item because she's marginally geared (she's an alt). To date, I've gotten two whole chaos orbs on her and my only reason for subjecting her to heroics is for orbs. It sucks that she has all these great recipes that she can't make, while my healer has more orbs than she needs (because she's a healer so of course it's easier to run dungeons with her). It's not fair that the flow of chaos orbs is dictated by the PVE viability of your character, not their crafting skill. It's also not fair that Tailors have been able to make epic items because their cloth has alternate gating mechanisms. I've already made a handful of epics on my tailor because she uses the "volatile" Dreamcloth recipes on cooldown. My Blacksmith has no such option. I heard several times at Blizzcon that they want to give us more options on how we play, this is one area where we need options!!

2) I'm not happy that Scribes got shafted on glyphs and gained no real alternatives to replace them. The Inscription profession was initially built on the idea of selling glyphs and then that ability was taken away. The current market is so cutthroat it's just not worth it to me. But there's nothing else I make that sells well. We have relics, but they are very slow movers. We have Darkmoon cards, but they are very component intensive and fraught with RNG. I would have to rank this at the bottom of viable professions, even the poster child of craptastic (Engineering) is better off right now.

3) I think it's unfair that Jewelcrafting got no epic recipes. All other gear professions received epics except Jewelcrafting. Have you seen the mats for our PVE rings and necklaces? They're insane! And yet who will spend the money for them when raiders are expected to show up in 360+ gear? You can't gear up an alt with JC stuff, players are better off farming the Headless Horseman or the doing the Molten Front. I know we're getting epic gem cuts soon, but the gems will be hard to get our hands on. Meanwhile our jewelry is a joke. We should have gotten epic 359 gear from Day 1, just like other professions had.

That should be plenty of angst to kick off this conversation, so let's hear about your beefs!

Foo, the glyph market really varies. I play on a PVE realm, my friend plays on a PvE RP realm. He makes 2-3k a day from glyphs and that's buying whiptail at 40g a stack. On my server glyphs are a total loss. Whiptail is 18g a stack and glyphs sell for 4-5g if you are lucky.

However on the RP realm MFC just dont sell. ever. On my normal realm I sell about 100 a day at 10g each.

Foo, not every server/market is the same. If you researched Inscr (as you suggest Kaliope does), you know that.

Having just 2 or 3 major players as competition is very different scenario from having 5+. Not everyone has the will/luxury of time/discipline to devote attention to undercutting, watching their competition constantly, and mass crafting that Inscr needs.

On the other hand, Kaliope, I do not think they could ever balance the professions perfectly: some people take them as purely money makers, while others take them as gameplay buffs (raiding and/or pvp). While those two purposes might be compatible, sometimes one is stronger than the other - Engi being the case (for example) in favor of gameplay buffs.

1) I hate the milling/making inks part of inscription. Far too time consuming just let us make inks directly from herbs, why was the whole pigment phase ever implemented..

2) Another thing I really dont like is that tailoring/blacksmithing/leatherworking always get so many new recipes in patches and the other professions get nothing (next to nothing). Why not give the other professions something to look forward to also? Inscription could get new relic/offhand recipes/trinkets, jewelcrafter new rings/ necklaces, alchemy new flask recipes? enchanting recipes to make wands? engineering could use some nices updated googles.

1) I also want automated prospecting/milling. I can leave my miner to smelt hundreds of ores while I do something else, but to prospect or mill I have to sit and press a button every few seconds. Potentially for hours 2) I agree, more JC epic jewellery.3) Make skinning possible even if people don't loot. I remember seeing a suggestion that it could leave the meaty corpse to loot later.

Enchanting recipes from BC and WotLK need to specify iLevel, like Cataclysm ones do ("Requires a level 300 or higher item"). The current situation "Requires a level 35 or higher item", "Requires a level 60 or higher item", is obsolete and confusing.

For BC recipes, it could be: "Requires a level 40 or higher item", and for WotLK recipes: "Requires a level 85 or higher item".

wow! reading through this, and I agree with all of you about what needs to be addressed, I suddenly realized and am pretty bugged that Blizz never came to the crafters, like they did the classes and ask us a simple question. What would we like changed.

As for glyphs and now to an extent, gems, I'm bugged that the majority of the focus on these professions is how to manipulate an already over-inflated market. This idea that gems only drop in raids stinks for the large number of players who don't raid that much. Will the JC's have to bark their recipes or will the raider have to be a JC to get a gem?

I also despise the need for an anvil, it requires constant moving back and forth the anvil and mailbox. However there is an anvil and a mailbox directly next to each other in the Temple of Earth Inn (alliance)

1. I think it is high time that the crafting UI is updated. Mats should be easier to see, and number of possible combines should be clearly visible,and not like now, when you mass produce you cant see numbers for example.

I would love it if the UI was double-paged, like quests have been changed, with more room for text, and maybe even some preview (integrate the dressing room)

2. LISTS: Enchanting list is totally messy, it takes ages to find some patterns. Many names are confusing and are not coherent, especially ones named "Superior *insert stat*". Engineering is horrible in this aspect as well. LW and Tailoring have loooong lists of craftable items.

3. Milling and prospecting absolutely *need* a non-clickable option in the interface, which would allow choosing how many of which herb/ore you wanna "destroy".

Professions need attention. Currently the ptr forum doesn’t even have a section for professions. This in a way tells the whole story. Professions are something currently to min max your character for the best raid or PVP performance. What about the large number of players that prefer to play their toons for other reasons. One of the other reasons is professions. Professions should be able to stand on their own. How about epic quest chains (give every profession one) for blacksmiths that have nothing to do with PVP or PVE in order to get a portable forge that has a 20% chance for a double proc. How about an epic creation that takes 10 weekly cooldowns and makes a bop mount. How about getting rid of all the trainers and having the maxed skill level toons be able to train apprentices.If that wont work how about getting rid of 75% of the recipes on the trainers (leave just enough to level) and have the majority of them available as a research tool like inscription or a surprise proc when using your profession. It would leave the min maxers free to power level their profession but leave something for those that like the profession.

How about letting a rich guild be able to buy a guild house that has PVP guards keeping all non guild members out? How about letting professions make stuff to fill the guild house: kegs, food, paintings, mugs, tapestries, a mailbox, plants, chairs, tables, music? Let players buy rooms that join off of the guild house where they can put stuff. No PVP or PVE benefit just stuff to do to play the non PVE and PVP game. I would really like to see a way to differentiate the toon that likes their profession from the one that just took it to get the PVP or PVE buff. You have just the opposite now. The PVE and PVP min maxers get drops of both recipes and mats that are only available to them. Sure most of the recipes are for stuff that is mainly for PVP or PVE which is mainly great. Why not have the same reciprocation and have a quest that if you do 3,000 quests you get a gee wiz cool gizmo that lets you do your quests better. Explore the world and get a faster mount.

Professional Gear bags from training an apprentice that hold more stuff than the PVP or PVE’r can get. Titles, Mounts and Non combat pets would be ideal because again they do not have a relationship to PVE or PVP. All three only have value because they are seen as valuable. If someone does a lot of a profession let them earn a title for it. Not just a grats you maxed your profession. If you make or farm 1000 max level widgets you get a better title, make 5,000 widgets get an even better title. Make 1000 widgets and you learn how to make them or farm them cheaper (chance at double procs). Have 200 items on the auction house you get 20% off listing fees. Make it something noteworthy not just a freebee. How about if you don’t make 5 somethings or farm somethings with your profession for a week you get rusty and you have an increasing chance to fail in your attempt to craft or farm. PVE and PVPers would still have their profession bonus they just have become rusty at practicing their profession. The idea I’m trying to get across is that it’s a “World” of Warcraft.

Players should be able to play it how they like. It seems like Blizzard is saying if your not PVP or PVE you’re not playing the right way and stacks the deck against you. Embrace the players who play for fun and don’t think you have to get them to PVP or PVE. Let them have professional non PVE and PVP challenges and non PVE and PVP rewards for doing stuff non PVE and PVP. You could even have a special loading screen for players that don’t like professions to just have the loading screen combining the toon choice screen with the choose a dungeon/raid/arena/battleground screen. Save the overhead computing time and skip the world and go straight to the raid dungeon or arena of your choice.

For what it's worth, I agree with Foo - inscription is fine...even glyphs. Chaos orbs was also a pain, but I understand why they did it. I don't think it accomplished what they hoped it would, but I understand why.

My biggest beef is with how similar your 3 armor profs are (LW, BS and Tailoring). Same basic mats - same basic output. Again, I understand why they've done it this way, but I think it would be cool if some of the mechanics were more unique (ie. Dreamcloth).

1a. On the buttonpressing for mining, milling (and disenchanting) I wish they had a UI like smelting does (with one entry per type of ore/herbs), for prospecting, allowing you to say "Prospect Iron Ore 263 times." I've long suspected the problem is that they want prospecting and milling to behave similar to disenchanting, and my suggestion would not work with disenchanting.

1b. An alternative would be a new window with spots for items, similar to the outgoing mail message, but allowing an arbitrary number of items (instead of just 12). Items in the window would also appear in your bag, but greyed out (just like if you were preparing to send a dozen items by mail), and pressing a button (once) would work through all the queue'd items while you made tea or put the garbage out.

2. A while ago, they reduced the casting times for alot of the current recipes, but there are still recipes that take 15-25 seconds. I wish they'd be shortened to make them similar to the newer recipes. It takes me 10 min to make 2 dozen yeti, but it takes me 48 seconds to make 2 dozen mechanical toads. Netherweave bags and white bandit masks are also a problem this way.

3. For some reason, when they made cut gems stack, they failed to let them stack as you cut them, they each appear in their own bag slot and have to be restacked. Other crafted items don't have this problem. I suspect this is because uncommon gems can become either normal or perfect, so the program can't know where to put them until after they're cut. I think that's why the same thing happens with the living elements recipe. But I wish they'd fix it.

4a. I wish they'd do away with the lag-pause between crafting when crafting the same thing several times. If you make 10 of the same gems, after each gem is made, there's a round-trip lag before the next starts. I assume this is due to needing to juggle bag contents, but it would be nice if the client requested the start of the next immediately after the previous one finished. This is especially obvious when cooking with the chef's hat. This may be why the problem's not fixed, the chef's hat is too fast. As an alternative, I'd like the chef's hat to combine cooking attempts. Instead of 46 cookies taking 0.5 sec each with 45 lagwaits, It could make 5 (or 10 or 20) at a time (nine times) taking 2.5 sec and at the end making a single in 0.5 sec, with only 9 lags.

4b. Alternately, crafting could be like a channelled spell. Smelting 230 bars wouldn't make 230 casts of 2 seconds each, with a lag between each one, but would be one channeled spell taking 460 seconds, with a bar made every tick, every 2 seconds.

5. When buying items (not bidding on items) I wish they'd drop straight into your bag instead of going through mail. Instead of mailing money to you, I wish the AH had a new page listing all of the reasons the AH wanted to send you money, and a button to get it, an invoice summarizing all of the sold items and returned bids.

6. When buying items, it would say in the chat window how many was bought, i.e. "You successfully bought Embercloth x7" instead of just "You successfully bought Embercloth"

7. When searching for something in the AH, I wish there were a way to search for exact matches or single items so you could get just the uncut Demonseyes, or look for iron ore without pages of fell iron ore, or elementium bars without hardened elementium bars.

8. I wish there were an event fired up after each crafting/milling/etc. reporting all of the changes made by that crafting in one place, i.e. "-5 Obsidium Ore, +1 Arcanite, +1 Demonseye"

9. I wish the crafting page would remember it should be filtering craftable items, instead of requiring me to turn the filter off and then back on to make it work. Filtering in the searchbar on a name has the same problem.

10. I wish dust would stack greater than 20. I wish some of the essences didn't just stack to 10. I wish paper and jewelers settings stacked higher. I wish there wasn't an apparent upper limit of 200 on buying lots of the same thing, such as paper or simple flour (this might be an addon limit, but I think it isn't)

N.B. I agree the default crafting page is way too small, but there are several addons that fix it, so i have no reason to complain.

It bugs me that when my JC main needs a gem for a new piece of gear, it's nearly always cheaper to buy the cut gem than the uncut one on the AH. That's just dumb. And don't tell me to get into the uncut gem market to bring the price down, I have more gold than I need.

Although I DID see some tasty boots for 25k that would make me needy again...

JC dailies are my biggest complaint. I've been doing JC dailies just about every day since LK came out. Now it's looking like epic gems are going that route again. I understand the desire for gating and keeping people from being able to get every pattern quickly but this method is a lazy, not-even-remotely-creative way to accomplish that goal. -Calianna

Wow, I'm amazed at all the comments I've gotten on this post. There's some great information coming out of this. As to the markets on my realm, they are very volatile. Glyphs are especially bad, I've tried posting at different times of the day (morning, lunch, mid-afternoon, pre-raid, late night) and over the last six months I'm lucky to sell one glyph per day. I just can't keep up with the market campers without putting in too much of my own time. Cut gems are almost as bad on my realm, luckily my JC has other items that are viable. But I refuse to play the undercut game, I don't consider that fun or a good use of my time. After watching the professions panel, I suspect that Blizzard just considers that situation a part of the free market at work and they're willing to leave it be. At this point I've decided to stay out of the fray, it's just not my thing. I think any player should have that option and each profession should support more than one item type as a viable market good. Right now Inscription is lacking and in 5.0 Engineers will likely be back in that boat too.

With the Chaos Orbs, I get the rationale for having them but I also note that Tailors have alternatives. I'm suggesting that LW/BS should receive alternatives too. It was specifically stated that the developers want us to have options in our play choices and this is one they can easily accommodate. My Tailor is 81 and she can make epic gear, my Blacksmith is 85 (with Molten Front recipes that are in demand right now) and she cannot make epic gear.

I really appreciate all the dialog about crafting, it's clear that there's plenty of room for improvement. Keep it coming folks! I plan to use this information to draft a wish list that we can vote on :)

I don't sell glyphs, too much work for little reward. Mysterious fortune cards sell really well for me. People actually buy them in stacks of 200, I hope to make cookies out of, but it might just be scratch card addicts.

They sell for about twice the cost of making them, and the volume means the undercutters aren't as much of a problem.

1) Prospecting and milling takes forever. You can queue up mass crafting and go afk with everything else, we should be able to do that for these as well.

2) Long cast times. Why does it take 2 seconds to make a piece of gear, but an enchanting rod takes 8 seconds, a Tranquil Mechanical Yeti takes 25 seconds, a Netherweave Bag takes 15 seconds, enchanting scrolls take 5 seconds each, etc. We should have normalized casting times for everything. Make them all 1.5-2 second casts each, so we have to spend less time crafting and can enjoy the rest of the game!

3) Make enchanting bags hold enchanting scrolls! I have one rotting on my DK on which I post my scrolls on the AH, because I assumed (silly me!) that it would be more space saved over Illusionary Bags! Gah!

4) Fix the stacking of gems! Meta gems seem to stack fine as you cut them, but other gems don't and it's highly annoying to have to manually compress stacks every so often so you can keep cutting.

Why are crafted items so "lame"? I'm not talking about item enhancements, but armor/weapons (BS/Tailoring/LW). If it doesn't take a huge amount of orbs, it's usually upgradeable within a week (I'm looking at you, PvP gear, that I had to craft to level!)BS: Those 5-6 orb weapons? Heroics drop things that are almost as good.

Raiding recipes? That's from raiders for raiders, but at least you can craft decent stuff with them.

Glyphs/JC? That market's in the firm hands of mass producers who don't hesitate undercutting my few glyphs/gems with tons of glyphs/gems by large amounts of gold.

I would like to see a few significant tradeskill recipes that hold up well. I'd also like to see a revamped crafting interface, preferrably with an ilevel filter - especially for JCs! I don't need to see BC blues/epics in my list anymore ;)

As primarily a Jewelcrafter, I have to say that it's the Prospecting that I'd most like to change. Never has a part of the game tempted me so hard to go find a hack/bot program as the need to prospect 100s of ore. Though, I did make a macro for it so there's just one button press to each prospect. I usually read a book while giving myself carpal tunnel. There is no reason the game shouldn't be able to let me press one button for "Prospect all my Elementium Ore".

The fact that non-meta cut gems don't stack automatically when crafted is also annoying. But I've got the addon ArkInventory - and it contains an auto-stack button that's a real time saver. I also used it to create rules for each color and quality of gem, making it much easier to see when I'm running low on stocks. I highly recommend it, though it takes some setting-up.

yes - I just don't see much overlap between people who want to raid and people who want to be a professions maven. BoP Orbs just make raiders who don't care about professions worry about production and crafters who don't care about raiding getting left out. (It's a lot easier for a raider indifferent to crafting to power level to 525 in an hour than it is for a non-raiding crafter to power clear a raid.)

yes to scribes & JC and especially not having 359 epics or updated PvE versions now.

yes to the milling issue.

Something a Blue mentioned, but the 50-item mailbox is fine for mailing guildies stuff but not for getting 650 things from the AH. Nor is it a good thing for mailing mats back and forth between banker/producer/storagealt/farmer. Especially now when your crafting alt can't be in your bank alt guild due to perks.

I don't like how crafting has some value at the start of an expansion but by then end is irrelevant (see Darkmoon cards) The imbalance of Living Embers meant that it was not very viable for production.

***************** My biggest frustration ***I really dislike the limited range. Rarely is anyone a 524 crafter, you just level it to max. But then at max there is no way to differentiate yourself except for overpaying for a half-dozen patterns that raiders all get for free in their runs.

using data example, I would have most of the epics produced at 500 not 525 because it would trivial to level from 1 to 2 and it might take dozens of times for that last point (fishing is a good model here.) Also making more of something increases your chance of a proc. (If you have produced 32 rings you have a 5% chance for a proc, at 1024 you have a 10%, at 32767 you have 15% ... no cap but diminishing returns.

tl;dr: there should be a way to invest gold/time/effort in to differentiate yourself from other crafters by procing more items or better quality (e.g. like jasper rings) Getting to 525 is so trivial and cheap that is not a differentiator.

Just want to say, I've been done over twice. My 2 main characters are both an engineer and a scribe. So no good gold making options. Just wanted to get that off my chest!

Anyhow, why can't there be crafted items that are comparable to the best PvP or PvE gear. It seems a waste to farm a large number of mats, not to mention run a heap of heroics for chaos orbs, to eventually be able to craft an epic weapon or piece of armour, only to have it replaced like a week or so later with Honour / Conquest or Justice / Valour points weapons and armour? It would be nice to have the option of either using say a crafted weapon over a conquest points weapon for example. That would make it much more viable to do the farming for the crafted item. That's my opinion anyhow. I also don't see how there is a market for the current crafted end game epics, given they are all quickly surpassed by other purchased or boss drop weapons and armour.

Would be nice to see some end game crafted items in the mix, and for all profs, whether armour or weapons or trinkets. This would certainly make a market for them, as you could do away with the honour or justice farming, for mats farming etc etc.

1. Across all professions, as has already been mentioned, prospecting/milling/disenchanting is a pain. I use a macro program and still most of my auctioning time is spent doing this for the obsidium shuffle. My income is honestly only limited by the amount of time I want to waste on this.

2. Engineering perks. The huge nerf to tinkers, making it possible for them to fail in raids lead me to one of the saddest decisions in my WoW life: dropping Eng for BS. Engineering has never truly been regarded as a moneymaker and now it's tinkers are not comparable to other professions (to some specs, at least).

3. Archaeology. 'nuff said. I hate this profession with all my heart. I spent most of my 4.0 lifetime farming for Zin'Rokh, did the whole "don't solve Troll fragments until 450", spent around 5h a day farming it, for maybe a month (it was vacation time when Cata hit, I believe), and then just gave up when I got Akirus.

On Archeology: Things got better for me when they made it less likely to get sites for races which you've got all of the rares, but I wish they'd lower the probability still further, at least if you have over 150 of that race's fragments.

After that buff to Arch, I finally found the seventh night elf's rare, and Tol'vir became more common. I finally found the recipe for the mount on my 15th canoptic jar, but I'm still missing 3 rares, one of which I still want. I only do Arch now if I am already in the area.

I'd like to keep approx 195 NightElf fragments for future rares, but it galls me to waste any over 200. Anyone know of an addon that pops up a window when you have over 195 fragments? "You have 196 NightElf fragments, click here to solve:"

I know it's bad form to respond to your own posts, but I'm going to try to write it myself. On the off chance anyone's interested, I'll provide it after I test it. It might be simple enough to start as a macro.

about the jc dailies, i would like to see all the professions have something like them. make the recipes something you have to work at and they will be more valuable. the freebee recipes are never worth anything becuase everyone has them. Then again i would like for the things you craft to have an ilevel that also makes them worth something. I would also like to see gathering require interaction with the node to get rid of bot's.

I think if all professions had to do dailies with the same progression path as JC, there would be an uproar. Just to put it in context, let's consider tailoring as they are also gated by time to an extent. Ignoring the chaos orb -> dreamcloth, a tailor can make 5 dreamcloth a week. Now imagine you could only buy patterns with dreamcloth and it required ~200 dreamcloth to buy all the patterns. Then imagine that midway through the expansion, a new batch of patterns were released that required another ~200 dreamcloth.-Calianna

Archeology - I've given up on it, myself. Not enjoyable, not worth the time you have to put into it. Fix, please!Blacksmithing and engineering find themselves tied to an anvil much of the time. How about a BoE collapsible anvil that engineers can make? Tres cool, no?

1. I'd like to see automation taken out of the AH. I'm sick of being a farmer/crafter, producing a modest amount of goods and posting them for quite a large amount under what the professional AH players do, only to be undercut by some guy who isn't even there running I think it's Tradeskillmaster that will auto-update prices and auto-undercut by what usually is 1 copper. I'm not saying my stuff should sell first, but ffs make the person actually freaking be there if he's gonna do nothing but play AH. That is the major issue on my server, all the pro AH'ers who don't answer a whisper but will magically undercut me the second I post something under theirs as they approach their 50th straight hour online (Few people on my server have timed some of these people).

2. Since this expansion is more about Horde vs. Alliance, can we for the love of god make raid drop comparable gear for more than 2 slots per tier of content, or at least give us some decent gear that is horde or alliance themed, ala Imperial Plate looking like stormwind guard gear.

3. Give us a freakin' queue for Prospecting and Milling, I just got the insane title for my g/f's priest after just starting DMF rep this expansion. Milling 500 whiptail is so tedious and boring let alone those times when I had around 2,000+

4. Since warriors, rogues, paladins, druids, shamans, etc are losing ranged/relic slot, can scribes make trinkets? They already get to make DMF cards, how about some items that are a little less involved with RNG.

5. Arch can we please be able to decide what rares we get to solve if we're unlucky and end up making like 30 of each troll commons? I feel for the guy up top who searched for Zin'rokh, I have about 500 troll solves and no sword.

Something they might do to make Archaeology a little less random (or they might be doing in a minor way, but I doubt it) would be to make the chance of a rare item variable, like they've done for many quest items.

The numbers below are ALL GUESSES and used to give an example. The math is inexact, I don't care enough to deal with logs and exponential functions at the moment.

When I first started playing, the most annoying quests were the ones where you had to collect items that didn't always drop, for example, "get 5 feathers from killing Dodo birds" where feathers had a 10% drop chance. Not only did you have to kill 50 creatures on average, if the RNG was against you, there was a decent chance you'd need to kill 100, and it always seemed to be the last item that had a string of 25 failures.

Either early in Cata or in WotLK, they changed all of these quests so that the chance the feather dropped increased, the longer the run of failures. It might only have a 5% chance to drop, but if it doesn't, the next attempt would have 10%, then 15% ... 20% ... 25% . This means that the average number of kills could still be set to whatever they wanted (for example 50) but the chance that you'll fail to get something 30 times in a row is diminished or eradicated.

If the chance you're given a rare solve was dropped (for example) to 0.1%, but went up by 0.1% to a maximum of 10% every time you solved a common item (resetting when the rare finally dropped) You'd still have a very low chance of getting the rares, but after 100 attempts, you'd have a 10% chance at that BLOODY SWORD.

Most people would still need a huge amount of patience to get it, but all of those failures wouldn't be completely wasted.

As it is now, if there is a 2% chance (probably the number is lower than this) to get the sword, you'd need on average 50 attempts to get the sword, but after trying and failing 5 (or 100 or 500) times, you'd need on average 50 more attempts to get it. With the suggested method, you might start needing on average 50 attempts, but each failed attempt would reduce that number a bit, and if you were unlucky enought to have failed 100 times, then on average you'd need 10 more attempts. there'd still be a chance you'd fail 100 more times (200 failures), but that would only happen to one poor devil out of 16,000 people, and the chance of failing 200 times (300 failures) would only happen to 1 in a quarter billion people.

No one would need to make 500 attempts and still not get it. In perspective, the current way means a 2% would fail to show up after 500 failures for 1 person in (VEERY ROUGH MATH) 16,000 and 1000 failures for 1 in 1 quarter billion people

Every attempt made until the chance capped would be miniscule progress towards getting the prize, instead of pointless failures.

I do like your thinking with the drop rate comparison and I agree that they should include some of that logic in the artifact selection process. I see a wrinkle though, which is that most players who complain about bad RNG are usually focused on a specific item they want. This tweak would only increase your chance for *any* epic, which is often not the one you wanted. I think players are quick to forget that they actually did get epics from Archaeology, I'm guilty of that myself. Technically I've gotten seven epics from Arch but I certainly don't consider myself satisfied with that outcome. Four of the seven were fluff items and one was a level 50 gown. When pressed I'll admit to having two epics (ring/trinket) but I'm still not happy because I wanted the 359 weapons =) I think a lot of players have a similar view of the situation, which is how you end up with such angst. We were teased with epic weapons but most ended up a bag full of vanity items and epics we weren't after. I don't know how Blizzard can solve that without significant reworking of the system.

You're quite right, but there's already something (nowhere near ideal) in place for that; I'm pretty sure they've said that you first roll rare vs common and then afterwards select a rare from whatever hasn't been found. If there are 7 rare/epics, and there's only 1 you want, you may only have a 1/7 chance to get it for your first rare solve, but each fluff epic increases the likelihood, (1/6 ... 1/5 ...)

On average, it'll still take as long as the developers want it to take (if they want you to have to do it on average 400 times, they can set the numbers that way) but after 400 fails, you shouldn't have to feel that there are 400 more attempts ahead of you.

NB I could be wrong, they could be giving you an uncommon item whenever you rolled a rare that you already have, but that's not what I remember reading.

That being said: I too am disappointed with Arch, and have wasted alot of time on trying and failing to get things I no longer want

Just a side note, there are two categories of epic items for Archaeology. Some of them are really "common" and easy to get, whereas the meaningful ones are harder.

In the first category you have lower level epics (Azshara's something, Shaman/Hunter mail head, Nifflevar Bearded Axe), the 359 ring (Ring of the Boy Emperor) and some of the vanity epics (Nerubian, Fossil Mount, etc).

So, everyone that puts a minimum amount of time in Archaeology will get these, as they usually pop up in the first 10 solves or so. The meaningul ones, however, are the ones that make me angry >:(.

I would like for them to replace the patterns/formulas/recipes that were lost due to Cataclysm removal of certain mobs. Some of those sets I farmed for months and never got the full set. Now with transmog coming up and no chance to get that 'one last peice' recipe I have to settle for things that aren't as uniform in look. Also as a long time collector on my oldest toons I will never be able to finish my catalog with these items no longer available.

So them finding a way to put those drops back into the game would be nice.

Archaeology is annoying RNG. I have the "Professor" title and not a single level 85 epic PVE item. Not even one for a class/spec that I don't have at 85.

The fishing/cooking in Cata was a disappointment. The quests have very little replay value after doing them once for the achievement. Fishing rewards vendor trash and stuff that anyone doing the Wrath quests likely has already. Cooking gets you the recipes and then either RP cookies or random bits of meat.

Likewise, fishing to make food for raiding is not worthwhile in a ten man. The feasts are prohibitive (I miss wintergrasp fishing so much). Fishing for intellect fish is a 30% drop with 70% vendor trash. The 70% fish sell to vendors for less than raw fish, no one on AH wants them, and they don't restore mana. I am a priest... I have spells that restore health; I need mana. I miss the wrath fishes.

The raid drop tailoring patterns are not friends to crafting tailors either. With the BOP dreamcloth, I make cloth every week (and have since the patterns were announced). I can only craft for guildmates in a predetermined order.

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